Episode 216: South Asian Mental Health Stories – with Mrinal Gokhale

The episode transcript is below.

Carolyn Kiel: Welcome to Beyond 6 Seconds, the podcast that goes beyond the six second first impression to share the extraordinary stories of neurodivergent people. I’m your host, Carolyn Kiel.

Carolyn Kiel: On today’s episode, I’m speaking with Mrinal Gokhale, an author, speaker, and creative consultant based in Wisconsin. Since becoming published, she has collaborated with organizations and media outlets such as Brown Girl Magazine, ADDitude Magazine, Medical College of Wisconsin, and more. Mrinal, welcome to the podcast.

Mrinal Gokhale: Thank you for having me.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, I’m really excited to talk more about your books and your mental health advocacy. So, you’ve written two non fiction books about mental health in the South Asian community: “Saaya Unveiled: South Asian Mental Health Spotlighted,” and your latest one, “Taboo: South Asian Mental Health Stories.” So what inspired you to write about South Asian mental health?

Mrinal Gokhale: Basically I had a lot of social, emotional and academic struggles growing up and I never received any treatment or diagnosis for it until the age of 20 when I pursued college, or therapy on my own as a college student. And I think that throughout that time, I would observe notions of stigma behind mental health in the South Asian community and how it was so whispered about.

And during COVID, I took a free memoir writing course and the instructor taught us, this is how you can publish your writings if you want. And I was like, well, I do want to write a book. And then I thought about things that are of interest to me.

And then, you know, psychology is one of my special interests. And then that made me think about how I, at that point, didn’t meet a lot of South Asian or Indian people with mental health related journeys to share. So I thought that would be an interesting thing to investigate. So basically I, I reached out to organizations during that time, during COVID when mental health was kind of a hot topic and finally became something that was becoming more talked about in the South Asian community. And I had them put out submission calls for people that have an interest in telling their stories about their mental health journeys. And lots of people contacted me from then wanting to talk.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, I was wondering how you found the stories to feature in your books because I should say that your books are basically showcasing the stories of different people from the South Asian community and their their challenges and experiences with their own mental health. So how did you find those stories?

Mrinal Gokhale: I literally just took, during my research, I put in “South Asian mental health” into the Google search bar and in social media as a hashtag and wasn’t expecting a lot of results, but I got a lot more results than I expected, such as nonprofit organizations that do work around that. And from there I would email them like, “Hey, I’m looking for South Asian people with a mental health related journey to share. They can be anonymous if they would like. I would want to talk to them, learn about their story and publish it.” And they put out submission calls on their social media. And then people responded to those submission calls by contacting me. And then I would get in touch with them to learn a little bit more about their stories and then tell them about the circumstances. And they would decide, do I want to be in this book or not?

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. And did you wind up interviewing people?

Mrinal Gokhale: Yes.

Carolyn Kiel: Very cool. Wow. Yeah. How long did it take to, to put together a book like that of those collection of stories?

Mrinal Gokhale: Book number one was only like four or five months because I was on lockdown. And then book number two was more like a year.

Carolyn Kiel: So you’ve written two books. You, you wrote your first book, as you said, during COVID lockdown. So what inspired you to write your second book?

Mrinal Gokhale: So ever since I wrote my first book, that opened up all these opportunities for me to do public speaking, such as like people with yourself. And people would, readers would reach out to me, as well as people who found me on social media, and contact me and say, either compliment my book or tell me about their own personal stories a bit.

And I discovered that there were holes in book number one, or I guess areas to explore that, that, you know, made me want to do book number two. Such as, you know, book number one didn’t have a lot of male representation, it didn’t have a lot of LGBT representation, and book number two does have that. And I think it’s because with time people, you know, feel more comfortable opening up and because I’m better networked and was able to meet people on my own, as a result of it. So I felt that there was more, you know, intersectionality or identities within the South Asian community itself, communities within the community, whose stories needed to be told.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Yeah. That’s great that writing the first book kind of opened up those opportunities and that more and more people were willing to share from all different kinds of backgrounds. That yeah, that’s really important..

What are some like common mental health related challenges or themes within the South Asian community that you’ve written about in your books?

Mrinal Gokhale: So in book number one, particularly, I observed that a lot of people would talk about depression and anxiety. And most of the time that depression and anxiety would be driven by situational things. I think that in the South Asian diaspora, or perhaps the Asian diaspora as a whole, model minority myth has always been a hot topic. What does that mean? It’s the notion that people of certain ethnic groups are effortlessly and unequivocally successful. So when you think about, you know, stereotypes of, you know, a lot of Indian people working as doctors, engineers, lawyers, programmers. You hear about, you know, the Chinese math wiz in school or whatever. I think that that’s an intersection that’s, you know, one notion that can lead to things like late diagnosis or no diagnosis, you know, the unrealistic expectations from society that people might have, you know, in school systems and healthcare systems and not even know that they have these biases.

So collectivistic culture being another one. So collectivistic culture is the idea that you know, your identity belongs to your community or your tribe rather than yourself, which is more on the individualistic side and found in Western cultures, you know. And I think both individualism and collectivism have their pros and cons. In collectivism, it’s like, you know, community is always a good thing, but then there’s also the fear of being different as a result of it. The fear of doing something that’s not done by the rest of your community and therefore being shunned for it, that type of thing. There is a saying in the Hindi language, “log kya kahenge?” which means “what will people think?” And if you were a person who was raised on that phrase, then of course there’s going to be more shame in admitting to failure, admitting to a struggle, seeking help in a way that, you know, the generations prior to you did not do such as, you know, with therapy. In India, you know, to, to this day probably, people see therapists more rarely than they do here, which, you know, therapy is a Western Eurocentric concept. And again, there’s a lot of debates on, you know, whether that’s a good thing, therapy is a good thing or a bad thing, for that reason.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. And for the people that you spoke with for your book, did you speak with people who were were living in different parts of South Asia or who had immigrated to the United States or other countries? And if you spoke with both, did you notice differences in their types of experiences?

Mrinal Gokhale: I spoke to South Asian people that were you know, children of immigrants and growing up in either like U. S. or Canada, sometimes India. And I would observe differences such as, you know, access level of health care seems to differ. You know, class, socioeconomic status can differ, and that can also lead to differences in accessibility. So, for example there’s more working class South Asian families in Canada compared to America, for example.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. Yeah. Cause that’s a, that’s a whole nother layer of, you know, being in a different country from where you were born or from where your parents were born. That’s that, that adds as well, I’d imagine. And how did your own experience with your own mental health influence your writing and your mental health advocacy?

Mrinal Gokhale: I think that my own journey as far as things like, you know, being late diagnosed is kind of what put me on the journey of advocacy in the first place and wanting to meet more people with similar journeys and you know, this willingness to, you know, really de stigmatize mental health and the treatments that come with it.

Carolyn Kiel: And would you be open to sharing a little bit more about your own mental health journey and kind of discovering your neurodivergence or the other things that you discovered about your mental health?

Mrinal Gokhale: Sure. So as I mentioned earlier on, I endured a lot of social, emotional and academic struggles growing up. When I was little so what I’ve been told, before age one and a half, I had very advanced vocabulary. I would flash people a big old smile when I saw them for the first time, unprovoked. And after that age, supposedly I would hide my face when asked to say hello, I wouldn’t do it and kind of just shut down. And fast forward, by the time I got old enough to go to school, I had zero interest in playing with other children. I didn’t speak very much, and someone says hi, I didn’t say it back. That type of thing. And and then academically, year after year after year, I would get in trouble for things like not following instructions, missing directions, not turning in homework in time, unless one of my parents sat in the same room as me while it was getting done.

And and then two, I was told that you know, I had, I adopted kind of an attitude growing up where, you know, I don’t obey anything at all, unless I understand the logic behind it. And I was labeled argumentative. So basically, this carried on. And again, never been to a single therapist or got a psychological evaluation for any of these things. I think because these things were seen as not trying hard enough.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah.

Mrinal Gokhale: And I, I’ll say too, you know, I have parents with advanced degrees. They could help me in the subjects that I was struggling in. It was a battle, but they were able to do it and as a result, I didn’t fail. So, that could have also led to a misdiagnosis too.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Yeah, I could see that sometimes school challenges, depending on what those challenges are, are the things that raise the flags of, oh, maybe we need more interventions. But sometimes, you know, if you’re doing okay in school or you have enough supports to do well enough and pass your classes or even sometimes excel in certain subjects, sometimes that means like, oh, I guess, I guess she’s fine because, you know, she’s doing fine in school. Her grades are great. So hey.

Mrinal Gokhale: And I’ll say, too, that I was a really good reader, writer, and speller, but would struggle in math and science, and then my parents are engineers, so in their head, there’s no excuse not to do well in those because they were good at it, and therefore, they could help me. So I think from that end, you know, there’s a gender thing. There’s an issue of me being a shy, quiet kid that doesn’t disrupt the class. So it’s like, you know, I feel like, you know, the teachers saw everything that was going on year after year, they were just failing to connect the dots. And then that’s where it’s like, you know, to what degree could it have been an Indian thing? Where, you know, they didn’t see a lot of Indian, meet a lot of Indian students in their lifetime. So therefore they couldn’t imagine that an Indian child’s neurodivergent, even if that’s more of a subconscious bias of theirs.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Yeah. So was there a particular. Incident or point in your life where you decided that you needed to go pursue therapy or get additional supports for your mental health?

Mrinal Gokhale: I was in college. And I was just walking through the student union one day, about 20 years old. And people table at the student union, like organizations, and the psychology clinic was there. They said, do you want to take a free depression screening? I said, okay. And then they said that I have a lot of anxiety related markers. And then they said, you know, you can work with a student clinician for just $5 a session. And I was like, okay, why not?

And then basically that clinician taught me about she basically, she did CBT and exposure therapy. So it’s like she didn’t bring up anything about autism or anything, but she, she still was helpful in the sense that she had a willingness to write me scripts and give me feedback, you know, in real time, like having me role play social situations and say things like, you know, “this is how you introduce yourself to someone. These are questions you can ask to make conversations with someone. These are the questions you may not want to ask until you get to know someone better,” that type of thing. And she would have me practice it in the real world and report back to her. So by the end of all our work together, my markers for anxiety went down from the severe to moderate range to the mild to moderate range in over a year and a half of work together. And I was able to practice and take what I did and apply it in real life and then make more friends and connections.

But then I think about the five year mark after that is when I felt like things were getting hard to maintain and there was still something a little off in a way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. So then I sought a real therapist.

Carolyn Kiel: It’s interesting, I’m, because I know some neurodivergent people or specifically autistic people, some do CBT therapy and find it helpful in some ways and others, you know, do other types of behavioral therapy and really don’t find it helpful. So I’m thinking that you learned the scripts and you sort of learned how to, you know, how to, I guess, socialize in a neurotypical type of way and that it worked

Mrinal Gokhale: Yes.

Carolyn Kiel: at least for a time.

But yeah, what was your experience after that? So it was working for a while, but then I guess as time went on, you said there were other things going on too.

Mrinal Gokhale: Yeah, and you know, even if it was a band aid approach, but still one that I do think I needed ultimately.

Carolyn Kiel: And then did you wind up either getting diagnosed or realizing your other neurodivergence beyond depression and anxiety at a later time?

Mrinal Gokhale: Yes. So I started that therapy at 20 with the clinician and she was a graduate student. I graduated college at 22 and started working at that age. And then 25 is when I finally went back to therapy and met one with the PhD. And that one she told me within a few months of knowing me of her suspicion. And she said that she suspected it when she first met me.

Carolyn Kiel: I assume she suspected that you were autistic?

Mrinal Gokhale: Yes.

Carolyn Kiel: Okay. And then, I guess from there, once you kind of had those pieces put together, did you pursue any other types of therapy from there? Or was it just sort of the knowledge that you’re autistic kind of help put the pieces together of your life?

Mrinal Gokhale: I would say both. I stuck with her and she also operated a group therapy that was more of the experiential side where people of all walks of life get to come together and treat it like an open laboratory and learn how you come across amongst one another and practice different skills. And during our work together, she got me on psychiatric medicines for the first time. And, I used an anti depression medication that’s used as an ADHD stimulant alternative, actually. And that in conjunction with our work together, I started observing differences, such as, you know, feeling like socializing was a bit more rewarding than usual. Feeling courage to push, push past my social anxiety related fears and do things outside my comfort zone.

And then we worked on communication together as far as things like, you know, let’s look at your natural communication style. What are the pros and cons of them? To what degree do you want to maintain and change them? One big thing we worked on is things like communicating in a way that makes my intentions clearer to people. because she said that like, you know, I would send her real short emails or real short text messages and she felt as though she had to keep asking questions to get to what I wanted to say. So then she would practice, you know, giving complete information right away type thing.

And then she would have me, you know, say, you know, send me examples of good communications in the workplace as like, you know, a form of homework and that kind of stuff.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, wow. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So, it’s really, it’s a very sort of practical application and it’s also good that you had the, the support groups and, and the supports as well through that. Very cool. Wow.

So you know, going back to your advocacy and your books, what kind of feedback have you received from people who have read your books?

Mrinal Gokhale: I’ve had people come to me and tell me their stories and say they resonated very strongly with you know, the people whose stories they’ve read about, you know, being South Asian themselves too. I’ve been told that it inspired them to do things like pursue therapy or even consider medication when they were previously terrified of it.

And one thing, particular thing, you know, for example, that I got was somebody sent me an email one day saying that they’re an Indian immigrant coming in for grad school or whatever, and that they were dumped by their partner who was a white American, and that when they went to therapy, they felt those systems clearly not designed for people of their color, and that, you know, reading my book gave them a lot of comfort because they found it around the same time and then they used it as a tool to bridge the gap between themselves and their therapist, for example. I had another lady tell me that she, that’s Indian, but never fit well into South Asian spaces and is highly Americanized and assimilated. But then she finds my book real helpful because we’re both neurodivergent and she likes the content I post because it’s geared towards people that are neurodivergent. And she knows just how taboo neurodivergence is seen in the diaspora.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s great that people are finding your book as a resource. That is really important because there aren’t, I don’t feel like there are that many resources out there that really look at mental health and therapy and treatments in sort of like a cultural lens specifically around South Asian cultures.

And, and that’s important because, you know, the impact of the culture of the country where you’re living and, and the, of your own culture of your family, I would think really has a lot of impact on your life and thus the way that you approach your mental health.

Mrinal Gokhale: Yeah. ,

Carolyn Kiel: So where can people go if they want to buy your books or even learn more about your other mental health advocacy?

Mrinal Gokhale: So my books are buyable on Amazon and you can find me on social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram and TikTok.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, I’ll put links to the Amazon sites where people can download your books or buy your books. And I can put your social media links in there too, whichever ones where you want people to follow you.

So Mrinal, thanks again for being on my podcast. As we close out, is there anything else that you’d like our listeners to know or anything that they can help or support you with?

Mrinal Gokhale: Yeah, that’s about it. And I have a LinkTree too, where you can find, you know, my guest writing posts as well as other interviews that I’ve done.

And if you yourself are, you know, an aspiring book writer, I do offer consulting services for writing, editing and helping to navigate the publishing process, as well as creative consulting for things such as events and networking and marketing.

Carolyn Kiel: Awesome. Oh, that’s great that you provide those services and those consulting services. So yeah, I’ll put the LinkTree in there too, because I think that probably has all of your links and everything in one place for people to go. And yeah, that’s awesome.

Yeah. Thank you again so much for being on my show and for talking about your work and sharing your own story. It sounds like it’s really resonating with a lot of people and yeah, thank you for the work that you do.

Mrinal Gokhale: Thank you for having me.

Carolyn Kiel: Thanks for listening to Beyond 6 Seconds. Please help me spread the word about this podcast. Share it with a friend, give it a shout out on your social media, or write a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. You can find all of my episodes and sign up for my free newsletter at Beyond6seconds.net. Until next time.